Red and Black
by Ember Nickel
Summary: Kinkmeme prompt: Marius playing Solitaire.


_Prompt: Somehow, (anon can decide how, or not) Marius got rescued but didn't end up finding Cosette so he is playing solitaire while angsting about his dead friends. Bonus points if the cards turn into the dead or lost e.g. Cosette, Eponine, Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Gavroche etc. Triple Bonus Points if Enjolras appears as a King and complains to Marius._

Stack. Stack. Stack.

"Once the cards are outside of the tableau, they are sorted with their own color. All hearts running together, all the spades buried deep underneath each other."

Flip. Draw three. Or draw one. Marius felt despairingly confident that no one was keeping score.

"However, while they remain in play, they are strewn about at random, drawn onto the piles in a haphazard chaos with no semblance of order."

Slide things about. Counting. Numbers. Always counting down, trying to reach the end...

"You move them about, obviously. And you try to bring a pattern. Although sometimes, if you've really messed up badly, you have to bring those cards back down to the mess of the tableau once again."

If he had to talk to himself, at least he could give himself more helpful advice than the rules of the game?

"But before that final ascension of the cards, all you can do is interweave them. Back and forth, red and black."

"Oh, I say, that's a bit heteronormative, isn't it?"

"Okay," said Marius, "what?"

"Don't mind me," said the last voice, "nobody ever does, I'm just sitting upside-down here in the dark."

"Who else is here?" he whirled around.

"I'm underneath the table," said the first voice, "you cast me aside. No hard feelings, though, we've all been there."

"Under the..." Marius kicked out, feeling only empty space. He looked up at the cards again. They weren't moving.

Slowly, and somewhat embarrassed, he took comfort in the fact that if there was truly no one in the room there would be no one to see him make a fool of himself. He bent down and reached under the table, where he'd carelessly strewn the Jokers from the deck. "What?"

"C'mon," said the Joker. "Just trying to give you a bit of advice. No one blames you if your mind is elsewhere, of course. In fact, we're flattered, but step up your game."

Marius blinked. And blinked again. "Courfeyrac?"

"More or less," the Joker shrugged. "Er, do you mind setting me down? It's a bit woozy up here."

Marius, panicking, dropped the card, where it perched half-over the table edge until Marius pushed him backwards.

"Oy!" came another voice from below. "Don't leave me!"

Warily, Marius retrieved the second joker, that one looking unnervingly similar to young Gavroche. He set the card down next to Courfeyrac, and they scooted over to the edges of the card, where they exchanged high-fives at the boundary.

"Are you..." Marius trailed off.

"Well, get on with it," said Gavroche, "this is an entertaining game."

"Don't you have more interesting things to be doing with yourself?"

"Don't you?"

Marius, having no reply, turned over three more cards.

Soon enough, a crowd of face cards was giving him advice. The Jack of Spades scowled at his inability to correctly compute the probabilities of victory. The Jack of Hearts vociferously complained about the drab pattern on the back of the card. The King of Clubs glared at Marius and thwapped his nightstick, although not very threateningly given he was about three inches high.

"Do you ever even win this game?" the Queen of Spades demanded.

"Do you ever even win your games?" he spluttered.

She harrumphed. "Often enough."

"Wait-I'm sorry-what's that supposed to mean?"

"You need a better hobby. Can't you afford a second deck? Play Spider or something. Or bet with your grandfather, I'm sure he has the money to spend."

"I'm not close to him," he said, flipping three more cards. "I don't have anyone, anymore."

"Marius?" said the Queen of Hearts. She was sitting alongside the Queen of Diamonds and looked somewhat ungainly trying to sneak across the aisle and clamber on the other monarch's lap, but that made her no less beautiful.

"Please," he called. "How do I join you?"

"I wouldn't recommend that," said the Queen of Spades, "it's an unusually painful procedure."

"What else is left for me?"

"Well I think there's three more cards before you have to reshuffle," the one-eyed Jack of Spades mentioned. "You could try them."

Warily, Marius did so, and found himself facing a several-inches-tall, and supremely aggravated, King of Spades.

"What," said the latter, spreading his arm wide, "is the meaning of all this!"

"Er...I was halfway through a game?"

"And my regalia? This crown? I am offended at this disgusting monarchistic sentiment!"

"It...is the only deck I have."

"I would have expected better from you. Frivolous merrymaking is one thing-it is your free choice, after all-but come now!"

"I'm...sorry?"

"Oh, let him be," said the Queen of Hearts, "he misses you, in his way."

"I just don't know what to do," Marius sighed. "Where do I go from here?"

"Forward! Always forward, despite a somewhat more...circuitous route...than you may have hoped for," the king demanded, amid doomed attempts to throw his crown down onto the nearby Two of Clubs. "Take heart! There will be other loves."

"And what about you?"

"Oh...you see, the revolution is like a deck. Oftentimes it seems chaotic, shuffling things around and trying to make progress. Some cynics say that every time around is the same, and we never get progress. Only we understand that, no matter how long the wait, only the last time through matters, if that is the time it takes to achieve victory."

Marius nodded.

"Keep us with you, in your heart," the Queen of Hearts suggested, "and we'll never really be gone."

"I'll try."

"And Pontmercy?" barked the King of Clubs.

"Yes?"

"When you consider cheating-that nobody will know whether you draw one or three-know that we are watching. And so is the Almighty."

"God won't punish you for cheating, necessarily," piped up the King of Diamonds, "but understand, that even in the darkest nights, you are never alone."

Marius nodded. "Thank you."

"One thing more," piped up the King of Spades. "I do not wish to be too harsh. I think practicing your strategy and memory is an admirable skill, that may serve you well in the days and years ahead."

"Yes?"

"But if you must play Solitaire, I would recommend a different variant."

"And what would that be?"

"...FreeCell."


End file.
